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How To Evaluate Your Social Media Campaign

By Seb on Thursday, February 3rd, 2011 | 1 Comment

My name is Sebastian Jean Batiste I am a Marketing Coach and  London SEO Expert. This blog is aimed at small business owners who want to learn new On and Offline marketing strategies, from basic level without the jargon.

“Frustration” – a word frequently used to describe companies new to social media and those who have been involved in social media but have yet to enjoy a return.

The problem is two-fold. First, establishing a social media presence takes time and continued effort. You have to be consistent in your involvement with the social media medium and remember that returns will not be overnight. Second, you have to make sure that you are using social media in a way that makes sense for your business.

If you are not sure, ask yourself these simple questions:
- Are you using the right platform?
First, remember that there are a variety of social media platforms for you to consider – most notably Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Further, within these platforms, there exist variations on the theme. For example, in Facebook, you can have a “Page,” a “Group,” or a “Community.” Each variation has its own set of tools, purposes, and capabilities. In addition, you may decide to participate in several social media platforms at the same time. For example, if you have a fitness center, you may want to use your YouTube channel to publish videos on how to perform certain exercises or tapings of classes you offer there while using Facebook to build a sense of community through candid photos, listings of hours, available classes, and upcoming events.

- Have you scrapped past attempts?
However, you also need to remember that whatever you take on has to be maintained and updated regularly. This can take up valuable time and people resources. While it can certainly be worth it in the long run, remember that consistency is key. If you do not think you will be able to maintain various platforms (or you have already started and stopped using a platform) be sure to erase or delete those accounts. Otherwise, you stand the risk of eroding your brand value when a customer (current or potential) stumbles across your forgotten Bebo account. Instead, make sure that what you have is the best it can be and do away with anything that you are not actively using.

- Are you providing the type of information and interaction that your audience wants?
Ask yourself what it is that your audience would want to read, not what you want to tell them. Providing discounts or having giveaways can be useful, but you have to have more substance than that. Consider posting facts about your company, the brand, or its products. Think of the tidbits of information you encounter everyday that make you stop and say, “Really?” Examples include fun facts about how long you have been in business, what happens “behind the scenes”, why your business operates as it does (e.g. why Yoga class was cancelled on Tuesdays, why you do not serve poppyseed bagels, why you buy local, why legal documents are presented in blue card stock), etc.

- Are you listening to your audience?
Likewise, are you listening to your audience? When they make a post, do you respond? Do you stay on top of when your company is mentioned on other sites, blogs, social media, etc., and make relevant comments to that affect (on that site and yours)? Remember that social media has developed because of the continued interaction it affords. Its purpose is not to simply broadcast, but rather give people a voice in things they would otherwise not be privy to.

- Do you allow them a voice?
Similarly, make sure that you give your audience a voice. Ask open-ended questions, run surveys and polls, include them in new product decisions, etc. – the more things like this you do, the more valued your audience will feel. Remember that interaction is a large part of a successful social media campaign. If miss out on this, you may already be out of the game.

Social Media can be a key part of growing your business and brand to attract local consumers.
Local Internet Marketing isn’t just about having a website, it includes being findable in multiple places when local consumers are looking for your product or service.   A Local Internet Marketing Consultant can help you determine the best route for your online marketing plan.

How to Promote Your YouTube Videos and Its Advantages

By Seb on Tuesday, October 26th, 2010 | No Comments

My name is Sebastian Jean Batiste I am a Marketing Coach and South London SEO Expert. This blog is aimed at small business owners who want to learn new On and Offline marketing strategies, from basic level without the jargon.

Do you believe that you were born with a camera? Is recording snippets of happenings around you, your ultimate passion? Do posters of Spielberg or Cameron adorn your bedroom walls? Well maybe not, but you won’t believe what a simple posting of yours on YouTube can do. Just think about it; millions of people log on to YouTube every hour to search for videos on different subjects. Among those millions there are people looking for information that you know. If you put your expertise on YouTube e.g in the form of a how to video and do this regularly it won’t be to long before you start to build a following this following is filled with potential clients ready to spend money with you. In the following paragraphs, I have explained in brief how to promote your YouTube videos and start to build a following.

Personal Promotion

For obvious reasons the first ones we tell about our videos are our friends and family. Do not take this lightly, as this presents before you an enormous opportunity of word of mouth promotion. You tell your friends, they tell it to their friends, those friends tell it to their friends and so on. You would be surprised to know that a single piece of information does not take even days to spread between hundreds of people. Tell your acquaintances first hand, mail them the links or send them interesting mailers. Take whichever way you want, as promoting in your own group yields real good results.

Website and Blog Promotion

If you happen to own a blog or a website, it opens another opportunity to promote your favorite YouTube videos. Post the videos on these websites in such locations so that everyone who happens to visit your website should see that video you can even set it on auto play so as soon as someone comes to the site the video plays almost like an automated greeting. Try to give interesting headings to those videos. There is no better way to catch the attention than resorting to witty promotional lines. Try to think about lines that would intrigue people visiting your website or blog and make them click the play button. Also try to keep a sharing option on those videos, as there are people who like those videos and may want those videos to appear on their own websites. It is a good way to reach the maximum number of people.

Promoting Though Social Networking Sites

Presently the social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Orkut have become an extremely popular medium for people to promote their YouTube videos. All these networking sites are accessed by millions on a round the clock basis. Just imagine the kind of popularity a video can get if promoted on such platforms. There are real life examples where a single video has been viewed by millions worldwide in a span of just a few hours, this is whats called going viral.

It is not just about one in a million chance of catching the eyeball of any big shot, promoting your YouTube videos effectively can bring real good revenues as well. Whenever you talk about maximum people visiting a website or a blog, you are talking about serious potential money. Wouldn’t it be great if you can follow your passion and at the same time earn from it?  Just click, post and promote, you never how popular you may become.

Business-to-Business Marketing Using Social Media

By Seb on Wednesday, August 4th, 2010 | 9 Comments

Social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, receive a great deal of attention for their uses in business-to-consumer scenarios. In these situations, social media sites can act as a way to build customer relationships, obtain market research, identify trends, etc. If your company operates business-to-business, traditional social media marketing techniques, however, rarely make the grade. In addition, using business-to-consumer techniques to appeal to a business customer can even devalue your company’s brand image, making your efforts look haphazard and dated. For the business-to-business company, social media presents its own advantages and requires its own techniques:

Awareness

One of the most important things you can do to build your business is to build awareness. Using social media you can do things like post pictures, link to pictures and news stories, and post links to your company’s profile on industry sites. For example, if you have a fitness center, you could include pictures of your gym’s facilities and profiles of the trainers you employ. You could also post links to any news coverage your gym receives and post links to your gym’s profile on any local weight loss groups. Alternatively, if you sell steel buildings, you could post pictures of the various types of steel buildings you offer and the assorted ways your buildings are used (e.g. warehouse, grain storage, soccer stadium). In addition, you could post links to your company’s profile on group pages centered on farming, industry, fitness centers, etc.

In each example, you are building awareness of the products you offer and the ways in which those products can be used. While you may have many of these elements on your website, including them in your social media will ensure that when someone is looking to fill a need, your company can be found easily.

Broadcast and Engage

More and more people, including business owners and managers, are looking to social media to find information on companies and products before ever using a search engine. As such, having adequate information available where your customers look is critical. An increasing number of businesses are searching for business-to-business companies using the medium of social media, however the level of buy-in is variant – Some companies may do an amazing amount of business through social media while others may only get on social media sites for personal use. One of the easiest ways to catch the attention of the entire range is to broadcast and engage.

Broadcast industry news, trending topics related to your business, new product development, new technology, etc. Essentially, give your potential customers a reason to visit your social media page. The goal is to establish your business as an expert in your industry or, in other words, as an industry resource. Once you have established your company as such, business customers will visit your profile or “friend it” just to get an update on what is happening in the industry.

Further, engage your business customers (current or potential) in the same way. For instance, if you have a graphic design company, you would want to broadcast market research reports and findings, the relative successes clients have had using your services, etc. In addition, you would want to engage your business customers by responding to comments as “the” business, such as you posted the results from the latest Nielsen report and one of your customers writes something like “So, Facebook really is taking over the Internet.” Instead of responding as a friend (e.g. “Yeah, my kids are always on the site”), you would want to respond, “Yeah, apparently, over 50 percent of consumers get on a social media site everyday. Did you know, according to the report, over 60 percent of new business is found one those types of sites?” In this example, you keep the focus on the business and demonstrate your attention to market trends.

Credibility

Broadcasting and engagement in this way can build your credibility, but social media sites can build your company’s credibility even further. How? By integrating your profile with your customers.

For example, ask your customers to write the comments regarding your products or services on your Facebook wall. Including this sort of element on your Facebook profile is similar to the “Testimonials” pages seen on many websites early on. As the comments are actually posted by your customers, their statements are seen as more genuine than ones you would publish to your website, making your business all the more credible.

Social Media and PPC – Effective Marketing

By Seb on Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 | 2 Comments

Both paid search and social media have been steadily incorporated into many business strategies, but if you have not integrated these two powerful marketing tools, you may find you are missing out on a huge opportunity. In as much as the return-on-investment, conversion-obsessed world of paid searches can seem a world away from the viral and community-based marketing seen in social media, their differences are exactly what makes them complementary.

On the one hand, paid search is all about lead generation, sales and conversion. Other than the handful of words describing your site, paid searches offer little in the way of branding. Social media on the other hand is all about branding when used for your business. You create an active dialogue with consumers and that dialogue builds trust in your brand and expands the concept of your business’s brand to form an identity. By creating content in your social media that engages your audience, you can develop paid search campaigns that are targeted toward that audience.

A recent study (October 2009) by GroupM Search, M80, and ComScore found that when an audience is exposed to a targeted social media campaign, they are almost three times as likely to search on the terms used in that campaign. In addition, an audience exposed to a good social networking campaign is almost twice as likely to search with the intention of buying. The study also found that brands had a 50 percent higher click-through rate when their target audience was exposed to both social media and paid search. The study illustrated that social media builds a stronger brand awareness and, thus, is able to drive paid search. This results in more impressions, more clicks on those impression and a higher quality score, which in turn means that your ads will be placed higher on the page.

Here are several proven strategies for bringing paid search and social media together effectively:

- Optimize your social networking

When your social media is tagged and indexed, complete with metatags, potential customers will be able to find you when they search for your brand content or product/service offering.

- Use keyword advertising on social networking sites.

When you run an advertisement on certain media sites, such as Facebook, you have a unique ability that traditional ads do not offer – you can make your ads appear only to those people who have certain interests, as listed in their profile.

- Let social networking influence your paid search campaigns.

For example, pay attention to what is trending on Twitter or what the key topics and discussions are and create paid search campaigns that include those keywords.

In the beginning, integrating your paid search and social networking campaigns can be trial-and-error. Expect that and use it. Spend some time running experiments, such as turning your social media off to see if it makes a difference or finding out which keywords tend to help the most people find you. The key to being effective in marketing of any type is knowing where your traffic comes from and why.

Facebook – A Great Way to Increase Your Sales

By Seb on Thursday, July 22nd, 2010 | 3 Comments

Nowadays, the internet is the most preferred place for advertisement of products and services and not just for online business owners. All websites on the internet space have ads strewn everywhere as this is what internet marketing is all about. Whatever product or service you sell online, the internet is like one huge bulletin board for your advertisement. And it is open round the clock 7 days a week. The best part of it is that there are hundreds of millions of people coming in daily from the world over.

Large corporations are advertising

By advertising on the internet, you can be assured of increasing your sales. To concentrate your online advertising, the best place is Facebook as it is one of the largest sites for social networking in the world today. There are around 500 million existing members who are active and their numbers are growing by the day.

You stand a better chance to ramp up sales and bring in more profits from the presence of such a mind boggling figure. To get hold of business, even large corporations are on to Facebook.

Being a social networking site, you can find loads of friends, relatives and co-workers and catch up with them as soon as you become a member. You can create a profile and also view those of your friends or new ones that you meet and add up to know more about them.

It is possible for you to send and receive messages and also comment on posts made by your friends. You can post on the bulletins to enable your friends to read them and comment.

You can do lots with FB as it is one of the fastest growing social networking sites.

To take advantage of the popularity, more and more people are using FB to market their products or services. It is a free and easy way to promote them and the embedded tools in there like Stumble Upon and Digg can be used to promote your products or services as well as your website.

Reach out to the world

Taking advantage of these you can generate targeted traffic to your website and help enhance potential for the sale of your products or services and increase the volume of sales for your business.

What is social media and how can it help you as a small business

By Seb on Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 | 6 Comments

Even though social media networking can take away much of your time if you are involved in several social media outlets, but the right way to go about it is to observe the 80-20 rule. You get 80% results with just 20% effort. But you need some real time tips for working with social media for getting the best results. Your basic requirement is to get high quality traffic bang into your site straight away.

Gets high quality traffic

You will have to write really interesting content that would automatically encourage the search engines to list your pages and generate visitor reaction. It will help to tell the search engines that people like your site.

Top ranking search engines monitors all the incoming links to your site and the amount of time they spend there. These are known as off-page criteria and essential for the success of a small business. After all, your content has to be attractive and interesting for customers to read it.

Getting social network traffic requires real time content and easy navigability as well. Social book marking is among the best and the most effective social networking tips for a small business owner. If you have already book marked a page on your web browser, then you know the concept well.

The social book marker will automatically appear on any of the social media sites that are accessible to the public. People need to see your book mark and get to know your content upfront.

Users can also vote on the bookmark which will help in enhancing or even lowering it in the ranking system. Your importance and utility in the social site will automatically go up if you get more votes and ultimately end up bringing more and more people to your site.

If your book marked page appears on the home page of any of the social sites, then it will make your day. You can be rest assured of the success of your business selling products or services.

Social book marking

In the event of anyone wanting to bookmark a page on your site, you can make it more convenient for them by providing more buttons for social book marking on every content page of your site. If you can use it wisely, social media can be an excellent marketing tool for your small business. You can easily solve a client’s problem as it is the best marketing effort that you can effectively make as solutions in the public space would be your best bet.

If Google can’t solve a problem or get solutions to pop up, social media like facebook or twitter can do it. For feedback on your new product or service, social media is on top as it is one of the most effective sounding boards out there. You can network and get to know upfront what you need to do for your customers without them having to call you.

Social Media – What Is It

By Seb on Wednesday, June 9th, 2010 | 3 Comments

Social media is something on everyone’s lips today, but what about the management of it? Social media is a free resource and one of the best ways to get the word out about a product, service, or company when used correctly.

There are two primary ways that social media management is used. The first is through the social media itself. Aspects such as RSS feeds, sharing, user rating and polling, etc. have the power to involve your customer base in way that is virtually unprecedented. You can get opinions, ask for recommendations, explain product functionality, and really add a face and a personality to your business. Social media may also be used in a promotional way through activities such as blogging, commenting on blogs, participation in discussion groups, updating social networking profiles, etc.

Whatever method used, you are essentially creating word-of-mouth and developing a brand image or reputation through social media. Using social media effectively involves more than just marketing and brand building, although they are important elements. Social media is becoming an increasing strategic element in knowledge management, specifically product/service development, recruiting, employee relationships, customer relations, and business development. However, effective use of social media may require professional management, Hiring a professional to provide social media management is over 36 percent more effective than doing it yourself, and that is if you are social media savvy.

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